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Electronic Business online: Despite concerns over compromising intellectual property and relinquishing control of the supply chain and product expertise, a growing number of original equipment manufacturers are relying on their overseas manufacturing partners for product design support. Increasingly, they are opting to trim R&D costs by outsourcing that function to partners. Getting manufacturing partners involved in design can help head off manufacturing problems at the pass, results in a quicker time to market for new products, and allows OEMs to focus on their core competencies.

Computerworld Australia: With its recent launch of the Desktop 2 search program and Google Talk instant messaging client, Google is expanding its effort to control the enterprise desktop. Among Desktop 2's strongest features, this article says, is a Sidebar that offers RSS feeds, news stories, e-mail from Gmail and Outlook accounts, weather reports and other dynamic content. Google's Desktop Search for Enterprise lacks the Sidebar but can index and search everything that Desktop 2 can, in addition to content stored in Lotus Notes. The Enterprise version gives administrators more control, such as forcing indexes on all users' machines to be encrypted. Predicting that these services, or something very much like them, will become a de facto standard within the enterprise, the author suggests IT departments should proactively roll out Desktop Search for Enterprise or, at the very least, create companywide policies for how users can utilize free search tools.

ZDNet: This author expresses skepticism with the Yankee Group's recent prediction that 75 percent to 95 percent of enterprises will have functional service-oriented architectures in place in 2006. That's because a key piece of the SOA puzzle — registries — is still missing. Registries will play a crucial role, helping SOA developers, administrators and users locate services that can be re-used, saving companies money and helping them improve their businesses. While much industry interest appears to be coalescing around the Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) standard, there are plenty of other contenders. Ultimately, believes a Capient analyst quoted here, SOA and Web services developers will likely use a combination of different registries.

TechRepublic: The authors of this downloadable paper say that CIOs should focus on measuring and managing only things that help the company differentiate itself from competitors. They suggest evaluating the size and scope of any problems, developing action plans to solve them, and evaluating the effectiveness of the solution. It should be possible to apply measurement data directly to those steps. They suggest ISO certification or other total quality management systems can help. Rather than using relatively meaningless — and scary — metrics such as percentage of revenue calculations, they advise expressing the budget in terms of need and impact on the business, breaking down spending in each product area and by each project. Beware of trying to sort through too much data or using measurements that are too dependent on complex chains of data, they say, and automate any data that will be routinely measured. They discuss the Balanced Scorecard and how it can work in tandem with service level agreements, and offer "10 truths" about SLAs. (Free registration required)

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DC Velocity: RFID technology continues to evolve, even as companies struggle to achieve ROI with the technology. The recently released Generation 2 standard will help boost read rates from 200 tags a second to 1,000 to 2,000 tags a second, and will also improve tag performance. Companies appear to be concentrating on how RFID can help solve specific business problems rather than using an all-inclusive approach. For instance, the pharmaceutical and electronics industries are tagging high-ticket items to deter theft and counterfeiting. DVD manufacturers are considering short-term tags that would help stores avoid running out of discs during the first two weeks, when the majority of new releases are purchased. Retail chain Metro Group has enjoyed good results, which are detailed in the article, with its RFID implementation. Yet some analysts are still skeptical. "I'm still going to be scratching my head for a number of years to see where the ROI is," says an Aberdeen Group researcher.

NewsFactor Network: While thousands of application service providers went out of business in the fallout from the dot-com bust, the software-as-a-service model is now experiencing a resurgence. Hot newcomers like RightNow Technologies and Salesforce.com have been joined by traditional enterprise software providers like Siebel, Oracle and SAP. No one talks about ASPs anymore; now it's "on-demand" or "hosted" applications. Gartner believes that one-third of all new software deployed over the next five years will be delivered as a service rather than deployed in-house, which will give it a 10 percent share of the overall software market. Companies can save big bucks with on-demand applications. For every dollar they spend on traditionally licensed software, companies must kick in another $6 to $8 for support and other ongoing expenses, according to Merrill Lynch. One company in the article is using an on-demand CRM application that costs $22,500 a month for 180 users; the annual cost of a Siebel upgrade that would have offered similar functionality was $255,000 for 165 users, with 70 percent going toward infrastructure and staff.

Government Technology: Prompted by a desire for improved data access, stronger customer service and increased efficiency through saved time and labor, a number of government agencies cited in this article are converting their records from paper to digital formats. One county purchased 10 scanners for $15,200. Three large scanners can scan 40 pages a minute, while the smaller models can handle 25 pages a minute. When documents are scanned, they will be available to different departments and agencies online, eliminating the expense of distributing them in paper form. Suffolk County, N.Y. is earning a quicker ROI with its scanning program by charging businesses and individuals to access scanned property information online. Indeed, it collects about $400,000 a year in such fees, a figure it expects to grow. An interesting sidebar discusses law enforcement agencies' increased usage of digital photography.

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CIOs and IT directors surveyed by Hitachi Data Systems who plan to implement storage management technologies such as virtualization in the next two years.

Amount companies spend for every dollar of traditional enterprise software they license, largely due to ongoing maintenance expenses, according to Merrill Lynch.

Amount being saved annually by the city of Dayton, Ohio, after it switched half of its PCs to thin client devices.

Redmondmag.com: Microsoft's marketing efforts have been generating as much attention as anything else the company is doing lately. Microsoft's first move in the name game was dubbing its long-delayed operating system Vista. Now it's rebranding its Business Solutions product line, which is targeted to midsized companies, as Microsoft Dynamics. In 2008, the company intends to roll four of its current business software products — Great Plains, Axapta, Navision and Solomon — into a single suite, with a CRM product available as part of the suite or separately. In the meantime, Dynamics software releases will begin to have a more unified look and feel, contextual business intelligence, a greater emphasis on portals, and increased integration with Web services. Microsoft is also developing a new licensing structure to help customers transition to the unified product.

IT Observer: It's no surprise that 78 percent of CIOs and IT directors surveyed by Hitachi Data Systems say that data will increase over the next two years. Unfortunately, budgets won't keep up; respondents predict an increase of no more than 10 percent in their spending. The number of respondents who couldn't say how much of their total spending was allotted for storage increased 15 percent from the last Hitachi survey, conducted six months ago. A Hitachi executive says this may be due to a blurring of the lines between spending on traditional capacity and emerging storage management technologies such as virtualization. According to the survey, 49 percent of respondents plan to implement such technologies in the next two years. Storage capacity's contribution to the overall business, rather than simple capacity needs, is playing a bigger role in purchasing decisions, the Hitachi exec says.

InformationWeek: Gateway, whose mainstay has been consumer PCs, is trying to expand its reach into the enterprise by introducing a lineup of low-priced PCs, servers and services designed to appeal to companies with fewer than 100 employees. Desktop models start at $449. They boast several features designed to minimize maintenance, including a tool-less chassis and a design that keeps the processor cool by putting it in the middle of airflow from two fans. Gateway is also offering two laptops, priced at $849 and $1,349. The E9220T server runs Intel's E7230 chip set designed specifically for entry-level servers and multiple hard drive options, ranging up to four SATA or SCSI hard drives and up to 1.6 TB of storage. Although this article doesn't include pricing, other published reports say server prices will be as low as $599. Gateway is also offering a variety of services, from on-site consultations to a notification service for patches, updates and general maintenance.

Computerworld: After switching from PCs to thin client devices for half of its 3,000 employees, the city of Dayton, Ohio, is saving $700,000 a year with lower client maintenance costs and reduced administration expenses. The thin clients are linked to Windows servers via a citywide fiber optic network, and end-user files are located on NAS and SAN-connected storage devices. The thin client market is growing. According to a 2004 IDC report, thin-client revenues will realize a compound annual growth rate of some 20 percent a year from 2005 to 2008; during that period, the devices' share of the PC market will double from 1 percent to 2 percent. Credit the cost difference, which is compelling. Gartner says thin clients have a 35 percent to 40 percent lower total cost of ownership than PCs. Storage demands can put a crimp in IT budgets, as SAN-attached subsystems are far more expensive than local PC hard drives — but cleaning up end-user files tends to alleviate the problem.

Computer Business Review: Bankers will spend big on IT over the next five years as they replace their core systems. According to a survey by SAP AG and Accenture, many banks are considering a componentized, service-oriented architecture. Thirty-five percent of Asia-Pacific banks intend to replace their core systems in the next five years, as do 30 percent of their European counterparts and 20 percent of North American banks. Aging technology is hampering how the banks do business, with branch employees spending 40 percent of their time on back-office processes instead of more profitable customer-oriented activities. Interestingly, 39 percent of business executives expect new systems to assist with product innovation, while 40 percent of IT execs pinpoint cost reduction as the primary reason for new technology.

Des Moines Business Record: After big hiring increases in the late 1990s, followed by big declines following the dot-com bust in 2000 and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, IT hiring appears to be on the uptake again. Companies are upgrading their systems and investing in new technology, and need new workers to install and support them. One executive quoted in the article says that Web-enabled CRM applications are one of the biggest spending drivers; help desk/user support for such apps is experiencing strong growth at U.S. companies. Enterprises are also staffing up to strengthen data security. According to the article, more companies are using contract employees under option-to-hire scenarios to find the right workers. Another executive predicts a coming shortage of qualified workers, which may be alleviated by the use of consultants and/or offshore outsourcing.